Blue collar being ignored
What an insult to every person who has been looking for a job in and around Fort Wayne for the past two years. The only employees worth helping must be the ones who are worthy or smart enough for the current mayor!
We need to save the jobs of the highly educated and keep the highly paid employees here in Fort Wayne. Well, how about the unemployed who don’t have the higher education that must be required to have the mayor ride to the rescue? What a shock to find you have worked and worked to find that you are nothing more than the workers who pay for the education of people who are already educated.
Paying to upgrade the education of engineers, accounting staff and the rest of the Navistar employees who have chosen that field of work is unfair to the everyday working man who has worked for years at construction, manufacturing or labor and has lost his or her job and is now is asked to take a job with less money and no benefits while he supports the lost souls of Navistar again with the taxes he pays out of every hour worked.
Who is looking out for the workers who have been displaced from jobs they have worked at for years and years? The mayor and Workone Northeast sure aren’t; they just want us to pay the bill for them saving the highly skilled jobs that we need to move into the future.
At this point the future of Navistar in Fort Wayne looks a lot like before; they are going to move. Here we go again helping a company that has taken us to the cleaners again and again. Have we forgotten when Harvester moved?
JOHN MODEZJEWSKI Fort Wayne
Drag race a scholarship program
I am the promoter of the race that was in the “Losers” section of the Aug 14 Weekly Scorecard. I thank Joe Lemire for his comments (Aug. 29).
We have been doing this for 17 years, with the name of the event “Drags Not Drugs.” The race is only 660 feet – an eighth of a mile. The students go an average of 50 to 65 mph. Most students go faster getting to the track than they do on the track. If they do beat a police car, they are told you might outrun the car, but you can’t outrun the radio.
If you have doubts about this type of event, go to Bunker Hill Drag Strip on Sept. 26, and watch the kids fight for more than $20,000 in Lincoln College Scholarships. A total of more than $250,000 has been given in Lincoln Scholarships for a $15 entry fee. We also have a parent/teacher race, and the winner gets a $2,000 scholarship that has to go to a student. Fun contests include longest car, shortest car, ugliest car and burn-out contest.
I don’t see how this can be classified in the “losers” class.
DENNY and JUDY REED Bluffton
Engineering grads need options
In response to the Aug. 22 article, “Engineering career path retooled for local talent,” I applaud the efforts of the Questa Foundation and the Lilly Endowment-funded Talent Initiative to accelerate the training and retention of future engineers in northeast Indiana.
But we must ensure that engineering students will find gainful employment in northeast Indiana.
Trine University and other regional schools are collaborating with the Northeast Indiana Defense Industry Association to improve the local defense community’s ability to attract, train and retain talent.
But we need additional initiatives to acquaint engineering students with career opportunities beyond defense.
Without opportunities in a broad range of industries, the best and brightest students could either leave after graduation, or worse, question enrolling in engineering at all. This issue must be carefully addressed in the Vision 2020 strategy. WorkOne Northeast is focusing on displaced employees; it should broaden its focus to include the needs of recent and future engineering graduates also.
We are excited to have the largest base of engineering students in our history, but northeast Indiana must offer our graduates many career opportunities – defense among them.
DR. VK SHARMA Dean, Allen School of Engineering & Technology, Trine University Angola
Story subject unfairly portrayed
It was with much disappointment and some anger that I reacted to the picture of Anthony Scatena in the Aug. 30 article, “Firing an officer is atypical.” I am a long-time neighbor of this gentleman. I know he has a fine son and did respond to his neighbor’s need during a storm. I feel that he is entitled to move on with his life.
JUDY A. BENNETT Fort Wayne
